At the beginning of a project in manufacturing companies, one of the most crucial elements that management takes into account to adequately assess its commercial benefit is the processing time (assembly, disassembly, maintenance intervention, etc.). This article presents an innovative method that implements several steps in order to select the optimal assembly sequence of a mechanical product based on the group technology concept. A group is a sequence of parts with anteriority constraints during assembly. The creation of groups is an essential step that allows reducing the number of iterations and the computer processing time. Subsequently, the algorithm creates the dependency matrix that highlights the interaction between the various groups. Then, it uses two mathematical functions, which consider various criteria such as the volume of parts, the assembly time, the assembly direction and the time of use of the assembly tool, in order to generate a reward matrix that can be used at the end to select the optimal assembly sequence that has the minimum score. The different steps of the proposed approach are explained using an illustrative example. Graphical Abstract
